Wayne Epperson, a native of Victoria and a 1960 graduate of Victoria High School, is the author of a new crime fiction novel — Old Spies Die Hard — which was published last month by Amazon.com in an e-book and paperback.

The book is the sixth in a series featuring former U.S. Marine Frank Knott, a tough private detective who never flinches in the face of violence and doesn’t draw his Colt .45 automatic in anger. And he never fails to delight readers in taking down bad guys.

A sample of the novel can be read on Amazon at https:// amzn.to/2SIN3Kl. Summaries of the other five books in the series also are available on Amazon.

Epperson created the Frank Knott character and introduced him to readers in July 2012 with his first novel, Crime and Corruption in Texas. That was followed by Chasing bad guys and EPIC Justice, books both published in 2013. Then came The Glass Affair in 2015, followed by Catching a Killer, a short story, published in 2016.

The mysteries are fiction, but some of the characters and events in the books are based on Epperson’s personal knowledge of the Marine Corps and his experiences in a nearly three-decade career as a newspaper editor in Texas, Georgia and Virginia. He started his career in the news business as editor of the defunct Lunenburg Post.

Epperson and his wife, Esther Bauer, are longtime residents of Texas and live in Frisco, Texas.

He welcomes correspondence and can be contacted via wayne. epperson@gmail.com.